Commando Jack is much-needed stress release for tower defense gamers. The tower defense gamer’s plight has been that they couldn’t do anything about what happens on the field. It can be frustrating to sit back and watch as creeps overwhelm the base. Not so in Commando Jack. Players have a turret at their base which can fire at enemies, meaning that if those creeps want to take the base, it’ll be out of Commando Jack’s cold, dead hands.

The game is otherwise set up as a fairly standard open-field tower defense game, where players lay down towers to affect the enemy’s path to the base. The turret serves as extra firepower, a last line of defense against creeps, and occasionally a necessary element to take out air and sniper units. Special ammunition can be bought with the spoils from completing missions.

It is just so satisfying to actually shoot at the enemies, to feel like as the player, I’m having an effect on what’s happening. It’s more engaging, and failure feels like it’s my fault for having not shot well enough, rather than having to worry about trial-and-error strategies. It also requires multitasking, as focusing too much on one part of the battlefield while shooting may lead to units sneaking in to do damage to the base. It’s an extremely satisfying experience. The game does use money which can be bought with in-app purchases, but it also rewards players for playing higher difficulty levels with extra money multipliers to go along with the longer sessions.

The shooter portion of Commando Jack is really the most interesting part of the game: the rest of it feels like a fairly traditional genre entry, though the maps have layouts that are interesting to strategize on. This isn’t the worst thing in the world, though: just having that interactivity by itself is enough of a wrinkle to make this a definite recommendation for even the most world-weary tower defense fan.

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